Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN!
Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2015.

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Monday, February 18, 2013

Dear Randy - Do You Have a Check List to Track A Person's Information?

A genealogy society colleague asked me this question last week:

"Do you have a checklist of
items to use as a guide to make sure, and keep track of, life
events and documents to a person’s life, i.e. birth
certificate, marriage certificate, death certificate, census
records, etc.?"

I replied, "Of course...I'll send a form in word processor format to you."

Here are images of a filled-in form for Joshua Smith to show what I use to track what records I have searched for, and found, for a specific person or couple:

As you can see, I've added an Internet research summary, a timeline, and a to-do list to the first page summary form of an overall research summary.

The value of these forms is that, in one document, I can see what I have searched for and found, what I have not searched for, and what I need to search for.

I don't do this for every person - I usually do it only for my brick wall or especially challenging ancestors.

I can update it any time I want to - I just need to remember to update the revision date as well. I can have the research form open and search the different websites one-by-one and add material to the form instantaneously. My goal is to review and update each one of these at least once a year in an effort to capture any new information that becomes available, or identify resources that I haven't considered before.

The form has evolved over the years, as more resources have come online, that page has expanded. Since it is in a Microsoft Word table format, I can expand the lists to additional pages as needed, whether it's adding categories or adding more detail to a category.

I've put these files for my elusive ancestors in Evernote so that I have them available to me on my smart phone, tablet and laptop (as long as I have an Internet or cell connection).

I don't want to send this form out to requestors because it is very much a work in progress, and can probably be done better by someone else (or by your genealogy management program). But feel free to use the ideas and categories to create your own list or form.

5 comments:

I can see I was preaching to the choir last Saturday at the CGSSD about electronic formats and publishing as you go. I like your basic research summary by category of record. I've done my summaries chronoligically by when the record was created for a long time now, but I can see the advantages of your system, too.

I was particularly interested in the timeline, but what I would really like is a timeline for more than one person -- an event-based database that could link people with events.

I've described my wish-list for such a program here Event-based history and genealogy software, and would be interested in knowinbg if there are others who feel the need for such a thing, and if there is anyone who might be interested in writing such a program. My programming skills aren't up to it, otherwise I would write it myself.

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About Me

I am a native San Diegan, a graduate of San Diego State University, a retired aerospace engineer, a genealogist and a family guy.
My wife (Angel Linda) and I have two lovely daughters, and four darling grandchildren. We love to visit them and have them visit us.
Angel Linda and I love to travel to visit friends and relatives, to sightsee, to cruise or to do genealogy. Our travels have taken us all over the USA, to England, Down Under and Scandinavia.
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Contact me via email at randy.seaver@gmail.com